Move over maple bacon donuts, bacon chocolate chip cookies have arrived for your salty sweet combo cravings! Yesterday your feeds were likely flooded with cookie recipes for National Cookie Day. I didn’t want this extra special cookie recipe to get lost in the cookie scroll, so here we are, fashionably late. Brunch dessert, cookie exchange, or a tailgate sweet treat, these cookies will be a hit!
You read the title right, I put bacon in a cookie. Well, actually, my sister, Emily, did it first a handful of years ago. I played around with the recipe for few years before feeling like the recipe was everything I wanted in a cookie. This cookie is rich, salty, sweet and chocolatey. They’re also a great conversation starter. I love the look on a person’s face who has just picked up what they think is a chocolate chip cookie and I tell them it’s a BACON chocolate chip cookie. There might be a bit of confusion at first, but the first bite always has ’em hooked.
Recipe Evolution
If you’re going to put an ingredient like bacon in a cookie, it can’t be just your ordinary chocolate chip cookie with bacon bits. Am I right, or am I right? This is where the browned butter and dark brown sugar come in. These two ingredients make this dough so rich and decadent! The light nuttiness and caramelly smoothness of the dough perfectly compliments to the salty bacon and slightly bitter chocolate. Definitely not your ordinary chocolate chip cookie! Another perk to using browned butter is this dough comes together without having to break out a hand mixer. No need to cream the butter and sugar together for this cookie recipe!
Keys to Success
- Get your bacon crispy. I’m not sure how many times I’ve linked my post on rendering bacon, but, bacon will always a HIH staple. Check out this post on how to get perfectly rendered bacon bits so you can get the perfect crispy bacon in every bite of cookie.
- Use a cookie scoop. This dough is chocked full of bacon and chocolate chips. The scoop makes it so easy to keep your cookies uniform. If you’ve been around HIH, I’ve linked this set of three cookie scoops quite a few times and I haven’t even posted a cookie recipe until today! I promise this won’t be the last time. Treat yo self! There only around $13!
- Make the browned butter, then the bacon. Making the browned butter first will allow it to cool down enough you won’t worry about scrambling your eggs or melting your chocolate chips into the dough. The bacon cools more quickly than the butter. If you want a refresher on making sure you get the perfect browned butter, click here for my full blog post on browned butter.
- Don’t skip lining your cookie sheet! Lining the cookie sheet not only makes for extra easy clean -up, but also helps keep the bottom of your cookies from burning. Most of the fat should be rendered out of the bacon bits, but the small amount of residual fat can increase the chances of burning the bottom of your cookies. Parchment paper or a silicone baking matt will do the trick.
- Get your stirring arm ready! It will take some good old fashioned elbow grease to get all of your bacon and chocolate chips evenly incorporated in to the dough. I like to use a combination of stirring and folding to get the perfect mix without over mixing my dough.
Browned Butter Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies
Equipment
- Large mixing bowl
- Wooden spoon
- cookie sheet
- medium cookie scoop
- parchment paper or silicone baking liner
- large skillet
- Whisk
Ingredients
- 1 cup 2 sticks salted butter
- 1 cup dark brown sugar packed
- ½ cup granulated white sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
- 8-10 slices thick cut bacon chopped into bite sized chunks
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F
- In a large skillet, add the butter and melt over medium to begin making the browned butter.
- While stirring continuously, allow the butter to come to a boil and watch the butter closely as it begins to boil. After coming to a boil the butter will begin to develop a foam on top before it turns to an amber brown. Once the foam is gone and the butter has turned amber brown, approximately 3-4 minutes, remove from heat and transfer to a medium mixing bowl to stop the cooking and cool for approximately 20 minutes.
- In the same large skillet over medium heat, add the bacon and render until crisp. Remove from the pan and drain excess fat using a paper towel covered plate.
- Stir together the dark brown sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla, and baking soda and add to the cooled butter. Stir 3-4 times with a rubber spatula, just to start incorporating.
- Add the eggs to the sugar/butter mixture and stir until mixture is homogeneous
- Add the flour, and stir with the wooden spoon to combine. Once the flour is mostly combined add the cooked bacon and chocolate chips stir until evenly combined. There will be enough dough for two full cookie sheets of 12.
- On a parchment paper or silicone lined cookie sheet, using a medium cookie scoop or rounded tablespoon portions of the cookie dough spaced approximately 2 inches apart. Repeat on a second cookie sheet if you're baking both batches at once.
- Cook for 9-10 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown.
- Allow to cool on the pan for 10 minutes before moving to a cooling rack to cool completely.
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